Our Parties
by HelenaWicomlights
Summary: Death doesn't usually try to catch people and bring them anywhere. Most of the times, he's just an observer in between, watching people's stories play out as they leave from the world they knew onto the next. DH compliant, EWE, eventual drarry (because I can).
1. Sirius

**Don't own this. JK Rowling does.**

* * *

 _Death doesn't usually try to catch people and bring them anywhere. Most of the times, he just watches people come and go from here, watches the stories of their lives play out as they leave the world they knew to go on to the next one. He, on the other hand, is neither here nor there. He's merely the observer standing in between._

* * *

Sirius had a half-grin plastered onto his face as his hex blasted Lucius Malfoy off the edge of the stone platform. Glancing behind him, he flicked a shield charm towards Harry and another spell at the masked Death Eater dueling with his godson.

He can't help but feel a little exhilarated by this- loud flashes and movement and action. He _knows_ he really shouldn't be so happy about a Death Eater attack, no less one in the Ministry, but months of practically-imprisonment in one's own house does that to someone. Really, he's just excited that he's finally doing something, and especially, something for Harry. Despite the boyish part in him, there's a much more significant desire to just help Harry, be there for him- hell, he would have done about anything for that boy, if he'd ever been given the chance to.

Then, the exhilaration all but vanished as Bellatrix came into view- he can feel his body suddenly saturated with resentment and anger- this woman, who actually shares half his blood and genes, was here to take away the closest thing he's had to a family. This thought, the irony of it, made him suddenly very want to laugh. So he did.

The next moment all was gone.

*-.-*-.-*

Sirius finds himself standing in a large empty hall, bright white light streaming from the roof and the great arched windows. It's not unlike the Great Hall, he thinks, just that everything's white. And just as the thought forms, four long tables materialize in front of him, intricate patterns carve themselves into the plaster edges.

Then, his heart leaps a bit as he remembered that the head table must be right behind him, maybe he could finally have the chance to stand on it? He'll just turn around and see-

"...Prongs?"

There was no head table, but there stands James, silent tears streaming down his face. Lily stands behind him, blinking rapidly and barely holding in her own tears.

Why are they crying?

Before he knows it, James had crossed the distance and wrapped him in the tightest hug, and memories of his last moments rushed back: a dark Ministry hall, bright spells blasted at black stones, there was Harry, and an archway with a veil.

Lily comes to hug him too. "You're here way too early, Sirius," she murmurs, her red locks ghosting across his cheeks.

"Lily? Oh Lily-" his brain seems to finally catch up to what's happening, "Lily are you alright?"

"Oh we're fine, it's just... we weren't expecting you for quite a while longer"

"You could tell? How long it's been?" Sirius thinks he could feel that a clock of some sort has stopped for him, and neither Lily or James look a day older than they did that night sixteen years ago.

"Ah well, not really," said James, who was now wiping at his eyes, looking slightly embarrassed, "but you look older don't you? It'd be much more amusing if you were old and grey while we here are eternally young, don't you think?"

"Brat," and they are both grinning.

*-.-*

Suddenly, Sirius sighs, "there's just this one thing. I just hoped Harry could ever have a decent dad. Now he's only got Snivellus!"

"Well, and Moony."

Sirius huffs, "Moony can't be a dad for the life of him!"

"Oh yes he will, just you wait and see."

"I was thinking more along the lines of Moony being the mum."

"Alright you two," Lily sighs, "but I can imagine Dumbledore saying something like going without parental figures makes Harry stronger..."

"What?" James sounds appalled, "not even Dumbledore is that cruel!"

"Well it's true that he never tried to get me out of Azkaban."

"You think... he knew?"

Sirius barked a laugh, "maybe, for how much that crackpot always knows, but even if he didn't, he knew me."

The three of them are silent for a while.

"We're sorry," Lily says finally, "for the twelve years."

Sirius smiles and shakes his head, "it's alright. I think I've let that go." It's not until he said it that he realised it was true. His arrival here, his passage through the veil seems to have melted away the hatred, resentment, frustration; at Bellatrix, at Dumbledore, at anyone and anything.

Lily beams back, "then let Harry go too."

Sirius frowns.

"You've got to. He'll turn out fine."

"I don't know how you did it."

"We never leave, you see. We let him go, but we never leave him."

 _Those who love us never really leaves us._

Sirius nods, comprehending, "no, we really don't."

*-.-*

"So, where exactly am I."

"Dunno, I should be asking you, it's your party isn't it?"

"My wha-" Sirius paused, and decided to drop it. Maybe everyone becomes as cryptic as Dumbledore after they're dead, "looks like the Great Hall, doesn't it?"

"Yeah," James grinned, "I remember you getting sorted into Gryffindor."

"That was worth a party."

James simply laughs as they are both reminded of their Hogwarts days.

"Oh, where did Lily go?" Sirius suddenly noticed.

"Dunno, maybe she thought we're starting to act like idiots again, maybe her job here is done."

"Where does she go then?" Sirius paused, "Where do I go?"

"Well," James claps a hand on his shoulder solemnly, "they say you go _on_."

"...okay."

"I'm sure I saw moving staircases somewhere around here"

"Sure," Sirius shrugs, "let's go then."

* * *

 **This is a strange thing I'm doing so pls pls pls review and tell me what you think?**

 **Next: _Albus_**


	2. Albus

**Don't own this. JK Rowling does.**

* * *

 _Death looks on, almost reverently, at Albus Dumbledore- yes, such a man has even his respect- at the last moments of his life. He doesn't fear defeat, for he doesn't need to, he isn't defeated by anyone here at this tower. He doesn't fear Death either, but chases it nonetheless for his heart's cause- his blackened hand is a testament to that. It isn't for himself, and maybe that's why Death could admire him._

* * *

Albus Dumbledore slowly sits up, enveloped in a sea of silver mist. His eyes are drawn to the tufts, drifting, twirling, dancing without ever parting or thinning. As he watched, Albus is suddenly aware of how soft the ground is under him; and as he shifts his hands, delicate, silky threads slip through his fingers. They're also a silver-white, and somehow it reminds him of blades of grass. He wonders where he had came across grass this soft. Maybe it was inebriated with charms of one sort or another, but in truth, it was perhaps more likely only a trick to the mind- he closes his eyes and wills the grass to grow, and sure enough, the threads become taller, stand up stronger, like they would on a bright summer day.

There's definitely something special about this place. 'This place' not exactly being _here_ , but what it's reminding him of. Strange, he thought, that people would become attached to places, more so when unconsciously done; he sorts through his memories to find whether there exists a particularly significant patch of grass.

He finds a candidate surprisingly quickly. It was the last thought he had, it seems.

 _A flash of green through the darkest night, and he was falling. For the fraction of a second he still knew he was falling, he thought of the meadow that must have been lying at the bottom of the astronomy tower. He knew then, that was where he was going to end up._

Hmm, alright, he always thought the most recent memories take up most of the mind, so he supposes he was right about that.

In an afterthought, he thinks about how his body was now lying on the grass at Hogwarts. He suddenly wonders about what's the use of _knowing_ so much.

Then, in an alternate train of thoughts running at the same time, he is reminded about wanting to find out where the patch of grass was: it wasn't exactly right, was it? This place is nothing like the damp and dark night, and the grass blades here aren't knackered and blown down by the high Scotland winds. There's a natural brilliance about this place, he thinks, and every spec in the drifting clouds seems to be shining, giving off a soft glow that warms him like the late summer sun. It isn't exactly like mist then, or clouds, the specs won't collect on grass blades like dew.

His brain is reminding him that he's thinking a little too much about grass. He sighs, they had a point in saying he's getting old, it _was_ probably time for him to go.

He's mildly aware of his glasses on the ground beside him. He leaves them there. The clouds clear a little.

*-.-*

There is a human-shaped shadow in the clouds, growing larger as the mist begins thinning little by little. Albus immediate knows who he's about to see.

"Ariana." His voice is a mixture of awe, longing, not without a little disbelief. He doesn't know whether there's also a note of pain.

"Hello, brother," she says simply, and sits down next to him, tucking in her legs and hems of her flowing dress.

"It's good to see you." He says after a long moment.

Ariana just smiles gently, her complexion locked in the bright innocent age of fourteen but eyes shining like they contained the world.

Albus continues regarding her, as years and years of time fall away, shattering barriers as his heart soars again with the intensity in his youth. There's also the regret, the one question, it has never gone away, always tugging at the back of his mind, he tries to choke it out-

"Ariana," he finds his allegedly brilliant mind failing him, "who-"

He stops abruptly as Ariana starts shaking her head.

"I think," he follows her gaze down, at her hand running absently through the silky grass, "no matter who it was, you'd feel bad knowing it's them."

It was true. The question was most threatening because there's no right answer. Each one of the three possibility would lead to a tormenting train of thoughts, and no matter who did it in the end, there's the conclusive truth that he- Albus- was undeniably at the center of the pit of blame. The haunting guilt didn't end at the death of his sister, but also the shattering of a family, wrenching away the happiness that belonged to the two people he loved. It was torture to acknowledge that all the sadness was single-handedly caused by him. So it was with a sort of mild admiration that he remembered Draco Malfoy holding onto his family, while Albus had just let his go.

Sometimes, it's easier to let the question stay simply a question with no answers, a fuzzy cloud of possibilities that doesn't need to be cleared.

"Besides," Ariana continues, in her tender quietness, "I don't think I remember, or ever have known. I don't think it matters. Not here, anyways, or where we're going." She looks up into her brother's eyes with a fierce earnestness.

Albus Dumbledore stares dumbly.

So many things- thoughts, perhaps, or feelings- that he can't discern are racing through him at once. A small voice acknowledges with awe that Ariana and Aberforth are probably the only ones who may ever cause him to stare _dumbly_ , never mind his (their) name.

And suddenly it was just alright, there was nothing wrong with Ariana being here. It doesn't mean that whatever has caused her to be here was alright, because that could never be justified. It's instead a sense of detached acknowledgement, that he has already left the world where it all happened, a world that doesn't have to matter anymore. The fact that she's here, peacefully just here, away from the turmoil of a world- and that he's here with her- that's alright, and probably for the best. He's _letting go_ , Albus realised with a start, _and it's alright._ It's a liberating thought.

Still, he'll always think back to his youth with a pang of sadness, at how naively he thought of love, and how he had let the supposedly love blind him, allowing him to throw his family away.

"Love is a strange force of magic," he says, more to himself than anyone else, "seems to empower the special few while destroying unfortunate others."

"It's just too fragile," she says, resting her head on his shoulder as a gesture of comfort, "breaks or changes too much."

"Yet stronger than anything when it's pure."

She doesn't need to reply to affirm, just shuffles closer to her brother.

"Aberforth wouldn't ever forgive me." He says suddenly. In the months and years before, though he did speak to him as the Headmaster of Hogwarts, as the head of the Order, Albus had long ceased daring to speak to him as a brother.

"But he loves you, he's just trying to be stubborn."

Albus almost chuckles then, "I do hope so." He absently reaches a hand to his nose, but finds that it's no longer crooked. Nor is his hand blacked with any curse.

*-.-*

"You're thinking too much again." Ariana stated.

"Well," he really thinks he needs Ariana to bring him back at moments like this, "I'm thinking about Harry." It wasn't just Harry, it was Harry, Ron, Hermione; Severus, the Order, the will; everything, every plan and every task that he'd left behind. But he knows he must let that go. That all was the fight of his brain; he might have memories left behind to continue it, but his soul is moving on. Nevertheless, as he thought about Harry, his heart aches for the fate he has in store. He's seeing beyond the end of the war and hopes that perhaps, just perhaps, life could give him the possibility of a happy ending, as unconventional as it might need to be.

"You love him."

"Hmm?"

"The boy, Harry, you do love him."

Albus sighs. Love has been undefinable since he was eighteen. For most of his life his brain had taken over, yet as he pauses to look closely, his heart never stopped working in the background.

"Perhaps I do."

"You'll see him again."

"I know."

"Don't worry about that just now."

*-.-*

When Albus looks up, he realised that most of the clouds have cleared away. The small span of meadow spread the length of a back garden. The light, the warmth, the grass, it all brought him dozens of summers back, and he's definitely eighteen again.

He looks straight ahead of him, occasionally regarding Ariana with sidewards glances. The way they're sitting together like this, her head on his shoulder, it seems like a moments stolen out of years ago, but it's more like another life, for it had never been so peaceful in their reality.

She twirls a finger in his beard as she looks around the small garden- Albus knows it's a garden now- "I've always thought about what a garden party would be like," she says, suddenly seeming so young.

"It's quite the pity I can't be sitting next to you as the brother only a few years older."

"I don't think it'll matter, when we go on."

Then, they both notice a door to a small cottage house, which somehow seems to have always been there.

Smiling at each other, they both get up- both of Ariana's hands in Albus's as he helps her up- and they disappear through the door.

* * *

 _ **Okay, a two things... 1. About this chapter, hope you liked it. Dumbledore POV was quite a challenge, especially controlling the amount of luna-esque nonsense, like, can you imagine me- "I just wrote 400 words about grass of all things!" 2. Here's something I need your help for: I'm quite new to FFN so I am rather clueless with tagging- what genre should this be? It's not really angst (is it?) and not tragedy even though it's death... So yeah, amateur seeking help, pls lend a hand? Otherwise, I'd also be super grateful if you could leave a review!**_

 **NEXT: _Fred_**


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